Leadership Theory and Assessment Essay

Emotional Intelligence Mark Orvidas Walden University Introduction I have to say that getting back to considering emotional intelligence has been a bit of a walk down memory lane. When I was working for J&J, I was invited to attend a leadership workshop on emotional intelligence. As you might imagine, and probably have experienced, there were many individual and group exercises. I particularly remember a talk given by Daniel Goleman, he stresses the social aspects of leadership, and how it emotional competencies may trump intellectual competencies once a certain knowledge threshold is achieved. Later, we all receive a personalized copy of his new book, Working with Emotional Intelligence, which was the fall of 1998. New Insights Self-awareness is a basic competency that requires being in touch with our feelings, and using those feelings as a guide to decision making (Goleman, 1998). Being self-aware can help build self-confidence as a leader. While taking the assessment I felt like a Likert scale might be a more accurate scale since I found myself answering a version of â€Å"sometimes† to many questions (Nahavandi, 2012). Consequently, when this happened, I answered false, for to be â€Å"true† it should always be true. That said, my score on the self-awareness subsection was by far the worst (5 of 8). I realized that I really don’t create opportunities to learn about myself, nor do I analyze events that affect me. I usually don’t take things too personally and move on to the next challenge (unless it really was my fault! ). I have to say that I scored pretty well in the other categories, none â€Å"perfect† and I think this is due to the fact the my job for the last 20+ years requires a high degree of self-motivation, self-regulation, understanding and above all, social skill: although, my next lowest score was social skills (12 of 15). I don’t do to well with handling difficult people, and I don’t feel like I am all that persuasive. Usually, I just let the facts speak for themselves. New Impacts I think I will take these results and pay more attention to the details of how a scenario has unfolded and put myself in a position to ask what I could have done differently. Use the opportunity to assess strengths and weaknesses and learn about myself. I feel like I am a pretty humble, easy-gone person but can be hard on myself when the mistake is mine. I feel that as a public health leader, I would share my missteps with my team and perhaps others may do the same so we all can learn from each other in a non-threatening environment. In doing so, perhaps I will be a more authentic leader and be able to share my vision from a credible position, and others will be inspired to follow my lead. Reference: Goleman, D. (1998). Working with Emotional Intelligence. New York, New York; Bantam Nahavandi, A. (2012). The art and science of leadership (6th ed. ). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.